Alexandre Massart, Blend Ventures: Fintech is as much a change of technology as it is a mindset and demographic change

The co-founder of the investment group Blend Ventures Alexandre Massart believes young fintech startups have the capabilities to meet the customers' needs, but lack the critical mass and marketing power to go mainstream.

How can financial institutions seize the opportunities that arise from working with fintech startups?

Financial institutions have built extensive infrastructures for decades and developed frameworks and solutions for increasingly complex compliance and regulatory issues and, most importantly, gathering consumer trust.
Young startups have been quick in picking up on new market trends and developing innovative solutions to meet customers' new requirements but still lack the critical mass and marketing power to go mainstream.
In order for bigger financial institutions to make the most of the new fintech developments, they need to allow startups to interact with their framework, platform, and marketing channels to adopt the latest fintech developments.

Fintech - to what extent is it a technology change and to what extent a mindset change?

Fintech companies are businesses that leverage new technologies to create better financial services to both: B2B and B2C.
From this perspective it is more of a technology change. However, it is also a mindset and demographic change in my opinion: people and companies need to change the way they think and operate to be able to adopt and use new technologies. At the end, outstanding customer experience is the deciding factor.

Customer trust and safety of the services remain an issue - how to solve this?

Start ups need to partner with established financial institutions or payment service providers. Both parties can gain huge advantages from this:
Financial institutions have the experience, brand, trust, resources and influence in the regulatory environments and guarantee continuity.
Whereas Fintech startups, offer innovative products that may solve some of the safety issues but need market adoption through trust for example. The two should find better ways of working with each other.

As an investor - are there investment opportunities in fintech that everyone is missing?

Searching the Internet, one finds lots of “Key Trends” in Fintech 2017 (Machine learning, AI, VR and AR, Blockchain, PSD2, Fintech integration with social etc.). Most of them sound similar. However, I am missing more technology convergence.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Alexandre Massart is an accomplished product innovation and tech senior executive. The co-founder of the investment group Blend Ventures has over 15 years global experience in investing, building and running successful companies with emphasis in payments, mobile, and the Internet.

He invested in Vastari, a web service connecting collectors and institutions worldwide for exhibition loans and tours, LaterPay GmbH, a two-click system that enables purchasing of digital content across platforms, websites and content types, orderbird AG, an iPad POS System for the catering industry and Visionarity, a startup developing digital and mobile platforms for a healthier lifestyle.

He actively shares his knowledge and experiences through his work as an educator and mentor. His specialties are entrepreneurship, venture capital investments and partnerships, new product strategy, development and implementation. He is experienced in sectors of Payments, Mobile, eCommerce, Micropayment, Technology, Media and Telecom.

The interview about Fintech was made possible by Nova KBM, PODIM Challenge blue-chip partner.

Alexandre Massart was a keynote speaker at this year's PODIM conference.